The Brave New World Team Answers Your Questions

Another set of questions and answers from the dev team at Firaxis have come in. Todays batch are courtesy of the Civilization community: civforum.de. Thanks to everyone that has been submitting questions! We are in the homestretch leading up to Brave New World, keep the conversation going at Facebook.com/Civ

-Kate @Ga1Friday

Except for France: What changes will there be to "old" civilizations in Brave New World? Especially now that the Zulu trait has become very similar to the German one e.g.

The French changes are the largest, but there are others as well. For example, Arabia now has caravans with extended range and its trade routes spread the home citys religion twice as effectively. Weve also updated Indias Mughal Fort so the gold it used to earn after Flight was researched (for tourism at that location) has now been replaced with actual Brave New World-style Tourism.

How do I gain the new Great Persons? Do we still collect Great-Artists-points and then have a certain chance for a new Great Musician, Writer or Artist, or will there be single points for each of them?

Assigning city population to work as specialist Writers, Musicians, or Artists in their respective Guilds will accumulate points towards a Great Person of that type (Great Writer, Great Musician, or Great Artist). This is similar to the way assigning a population to work as an Engineer or Scientist speeds the creation of those Greats. The tracking of how many of each type have been earned to date (which influences the costs of future great people) is maintained separately for each of these three types as well.

Other than the culture victory, what else does tourism influence?

Tourism is specifically the means to the culture victory, but it also has a large impact on Ideological pressure (Freedom, Order, or Autocracy). This pressure can cause unhappiness in other civs that are following a different Ideology, and given enough unhappiness, can even cause that civ to switch to your Ideology. If an Ideology switch does not solve their unhappiness issues, than their cities will flip to a nearby power (probably the one exerting the most Ideological pressure on them).

How strongly will the choice of an ideology affect the relations between the civilizations? Can ancient great friends become huge enemies only because a different ideology?

It probably wont help your relationship if youre a different Ideology from an old ally, especially towards the end of the game when youre getting close to victory. At that point, youll most likely be doing things (intentionally or otherwise) that will annoy the other Civ, and having a different Ideology will just exacerbate the situation. But its also possible that you may have the same Ideology as your old friend, especially if you two have had a long and mutually profitable relationship, or are building upon similar strengths. The effects of your choice will only be minimal at first, but can grow to cause rifts as the eras pass. Finally, note that AI civs do look at the Ideology choices made by their allies before making a selection for themselves. So its possible an old ally might follow you into one of the three Ideologies.

There may be situations in which I would like to prevent trade routes to be established from another civ, e.g. because I don't want them to spread their religion into our lands. How can that be done?

You cant really shut down another Civs trade routes unless youre at war, so theres always the possibility that some religious pressure may be exerted on you. If youre worried about it, you can always send Missionaries or a Great Prophet to the originating Civ and spread your own religion back, but be prepared for the diplomatic consequences if you do.

Obviously, the world congress elections are quite seldom. How can they significantly influence the game?

The binding resolutions that the World Congress passes affect the rules of the game, and they include the Diplomatic Victory, so theyre extremely strong. Banning a luxury resource, establishing a cooperative international project with rewards for the contributors, changing the law of trade  these can cripple or boost a Civ in powerful ways. Additionally, while the sessions start out at a slow pace, the sessions will grow shorter and shorter as you progress through the game.

Would you please tell us some more details on the new world wonders? And what effect changes will be made to the existing ones?

Some of the existing Wonders (like the Great Library and the Louvre) were changed to allow the addition of Great Work slots for the new Culture system. Other Wonders are now only available if you adopt certain Social Policies. There are Wonders associated with the new Ideologies now, as well. For example, adopting the Freedom Ideology lets you build the Statue of Liberty. As for the new Wonders, Broadway will give the player a free Great Musician, and 3 slots for Great Works of Music.

What new natural wonders or resources will there be and will we see changes to the existing ones?

Well give you a teaser for the new Natural Wonders: King Solomons Mines provide +6 hammers. Most of the other Natural Wonder bonuses remain the same.

What changes will there be to the existing religion tenets?

There have been a handful of changes to some of these. One of the changes that I can think of off the top of my head is Religious Art, which gives the Hermitage +5 Culture and +5 Tourism.

Which is your favourite reformation belief, and why?

Im partial to Jesuit Education, because often late-game youve got Faith building up that is hard to put to use. This gives you a solid non-military use for it, especially if youre pushing a Science Victory.

What about the future of Civilization V? Ed Beach said he would never run out of ideas for this game. So will we see another addon or DLC in the future?

Who can say? Were always thinking of ways the game can be changed and trying them out in Civ V.

What exactly do the new multiplayer-modes look like? And: will there be changes to multiplayer diplomacy (like e.g. the AI would not contact you)?

Weve made some great strides in Multiplayer. Weve introduced a couple new modes, like Sequential, and Hybrid modes. Sequential is where all players take their turns in order. Hybrid allows the game to progress like youre used to, with everyone taking their turns at the same time. Although, when at war the game switches to sequential for just the players involved in the war, so moves are made fairly. Once the conflict has ended, it automatically switches back to the normal at the same time mode.

In terms of new features, weve added an Observer slot, so that players can watch a game in progress, which is handy for competitions, or somebody who just wants to learn how to play. Weve also added a Pitboss mode to the main application that allows the game to run as a server. Log in, take your turn, leave, and the game will email you when its your turn. Once this mode has received additional real world feedback, we plan to include a stand-alone Pitboss exe in the SDK that will run independent of your Steam account. Weve also included the ability for players to drop in their own custom maps (either script or World Builder) into the main maps directory, which allows them to be played in multiplayer as long as all players in the game have the map.

In addition to this, weve completely overhauled the hot-join mechanics. We added the ability to kick players from the lobby and in-game, corrected many issues that cause out-of-syncs, changed the way that a resync occurs so that game progress is not lost, added multiple UI features, and much, much more. Overall, we think the multiplayer experience is vastly improved, but wed really like to hear your feedback once the game is release. These improvements are not just in Brave New World, but in all versions of the game.

What will the performance improvements of the game engine look like? What is been changed in detail? How will we notice the improvements?

Weve made many improvements to the base game engine from first release, improving stability and performance, and our players have definitely noticed the changes. Much of this work has occurred late in the process once gameplay was locked down. Optimizations in pathfinder, worker AI, Naval AI, etc., continue to improve in dramatic fashion. Weve also completed optimization passes to the textures in-game, including buildings, features, and some of the existing leaders.

How does the Indonesian trait exactly work? Will their luxury resources be unique, like the ones of mercantile city states?

Every time the Indonesians settle a city on a new continent, they get a unique luxury resource. This can happen up to three times. The three unique luxury resources are Pepper, Cloves, and Nutmeg. These luxury resources cannot be razed or destroyed, and Indonesia gets two of each resource. Yes, this is similar to the mercantile city-state resources like Porcelain.

In the Gods & Kings addon there were specific improvements to the AI, like e.g. a better sea invasion. What changes have been made to the AI, what will the AI surprise us with in Brave New World?

Much like the game engine has improved, weve continued to keep improving the AI. Weve seen that many players have had to step down their starting difficulty level, which we take as an indication the AI is playing the game better. Some of our improvements include decisions the AI makes with its gold particularly in the early-game, and Naval AI work that delivers roaming fleets that now correctly coordinate attack and move as one.

Which details would you like to keep secret the most? :P

At this point, weve revealed much of the content within Brave New World, but there are many small details and improvements that have yet to be discovered. Its been great to see our fans reaction to new information about Brave New World, watch them put the pieces together and talk about theoretical strategies to use these new systems. We cant wait to put it in your hands!